


Some Have Turned to Dust Inside

by Chash



Series: Coming Out of My Cage and I've Been Doing Just Fine [6]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-02
Updated: 2015-09-02
Packaged: 2018-04-18 14:19:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4709093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chash/pseuds/Chash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clarke's mother suggests doing an interview, but it's not until Bellamy agrees with her that Clarke is willing to consider it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Some Have Turned to Dust Inside

**Author's Note:**

> I have been trying to make this work for weeks, and maybe I still didn't make it work, but I did finish it, and that's half the battle, right? It is not. Anyway, title from Magnetic Fields.

_When I ask Bellamy Blake if he's ever acted, he smirks and rolls his eyes at me, which seems to be his go-to response to most of my questions. He's charming enough that it's difficult to feel offended; he comes off as the kind of person who's laughing with you and at you and at himself, all at the same time._

_"I tried out for the ninth grade musical to impress the girl I liked."_

_So he's always had a thing for actresses?_

_"Yeah, no, I got cast and she didn't, it was a total misfire. I thought it was dumb, but my mom was proud, anyway." He shrugs, a complete dismissal of his acting career, and goes back to organizing the notepads next to the cash register._

_Tall, dark, and handsome, Blake certainly fits into the leading man role. He's maybe not quite tall enough and a little too dark to be cast as himself in the romantic comedy based on his life, but it's hard to deny the fairy-tale charm of the story._

_Blake's lived in Arcadia, Virgina his whole life. He never knew his father, but his mother had a string of boyfriends who took varying degrees of interest in him. None of them ever stayed more than a year, but he did gain a sister (the glare I get when I say_ half sister _is the single most hostile expression I have ever received in my life, and it's hard to remember his affable charm for at least ten minutes after), Octavia, at age five. When their mother died thirteen years later, he fought for and won custody of her, forgoing college to work full-time at the bookstore he would later purchase._

_"Don't," he says, before I can respond to this information. "It's not noble or anything like that, don't even say that. I didn't want her to go into foster care, so I made sure she didn't." He runs his hand through his hair, apparently a nervous habit. "Everyone always wants to make a big deal about it."_

_He sounds almost sheepish, and I can't help asking what Clarke Griffin said when she found out. Something about the two of them makes it easy to feel like a gossip columnist. For a middle-school paper._

_He lets out a short bark of laughter. "She was half asleep. She just wanted to hear about my shitty band."_

*

It's her mother's suggestion, so Clarke's natural impulse is to ignore it, and then get drunk. Not even because it's such an awful suggestion, or because talking to her mother is even so bad, these days. It's just kind of a reflex.

But then Bellamy says, "She might not be wrong about this one," hesitant, like he thinks she might murder him for the statement.

"Seriously?" Clarke asks, taking a long drag from her cider.

Bellamy shrugs. "Apparently people still care about this--don't ask me why, celebrity culture is fucked up--and they want answers. You're back in the spotlight, your movie is getting awesome buzz, so, yeah. If you were ever going to do a tell-all interview, now's the time."

"I wasn't ever going to do a tell-all interview," she points out.

"Okay, yeah." He flags Octavia down for another beer, and a couple kids come over, hesitant, to ask for autographs. "Look, I don't care, obviously," he says once they're gone, and she snorts. "No, seriously, I don't. You should do what you want. But I bet you want an Oscar."

"An Oscar would be pretty cool. But I don't want to get an Oscar because I decided to tell some douchey reporter what's happening in my life. I want to get an Oscar because I'm awesome."

His mouth twitches into a smile. "You are awesome. But--" There's a pause, Bellamy drumming his fingers against the edge of the bar, thinking it through. "You know I love all those weird tabloid stories with ridiculous theories about why you left, but it might mean something to people. To know you left because you weren't happy, and you are happy now."

Clarke has to smile. It was a few years before Bellamy admitted the connection he'd always felt to her, the strange, irrational, our-parents-died-around-the-same-time-so-I-feel-like-we're-friends one. There's a weird way that people feel about celebrities, the intimacy that comes from following someone whose life seems like an open book, and Bellamy rarely feels that way about her, but she knows he still understands it.

"You think people are worried about me?"

He shrugs, a little awkward. "I think there's probably some value in saying what really happened instead of just saying nothing. And then maybe I'll stop occasional getting weird emails accusing me of kidnapping you and keeping you in my sex dungeon."

"You have a sex dungeon? And you didn't tell me?"

"Sorry, no sex dungeon access until after we're married. Gotta keep some mystery in the relationship."

"Seriously, do you still get those emails?"

"There was kind of a resurgence after the movie," he admits, shrugging. "It doesn't bother me, I know I'm not keeping you from your lifelong dream because of my jealousy or some bullshit. But if you found the right reporter, it might be cool. If you want to," he adds quickly.

Clarke leans back in her stool, which, given how low the backs on the barstools are, is neither that effective nor that comfortable.

"If we found the right reporter," she says, thoughtful, and Bellamy kisses her temple.

*

_It's not hard to want to believe in Clarke Griffin and Bellamy Blake._

_Griffin has been famous since before she was born. The daughter of Abigail Griffin and granddaughter of Ethan Melrose and Heather Daniels, she first appeared in public with her parents at eight weeks old, and despite their attempts to raise her outside of the public eye, she was often in attendance at movie premieres, golden-haired and blue-eyed, bright and angelic. By all accounts, she was a cheerful, intelligent child, until tragedy struck the family when she was thirteen, and her father died suddenly in a car crash. Griffin, in the car with him but spared from injury, began acting shortly thereafter._

_Her career came naturally; she was a critical darling almost from the beginning, and there was never any doubt she earned her success. It was the being famous part she struggled with; at eighteen, she started showing signs of child-actor disease, a few months of increasingly erratic behavior culminating in a jail sentence, but once she was released, she seemed to be back on track. For five years, she was a model celebrity, aside from a tendency toward privacy somewhat above and beyond the usual. Not that it seemed to hurt her popularity._

_"I hate interviews," is the first thing she tells me. I meet her before Blake--she's responsible for vetting me to make sure I'm permitted to speak with him. "You probably already know that. The last guy they sent didn't work at all, so I'm supposed to approve you, but--yeah. I'm always a mess in interviews."_

_In the interviews of hers I've seen, Griffin tends to go between two extremes--far too casual and far too serious. For our interview, she seems to have decided on casual, for which I'm grateful. I've seen her in serious-interview mode, and it is reminiscent of nothing so much as a negotiation between warring factions, with Griffin apparently always ready to end the peace talks and get right to the bloodbath._

_"Anyway, do you want a tour?"_

_She shows me around the Mount Weather Theater Festival, of which she is the artistic director._

_"I've never done anything like this before. They originally hired me to do fundraising stuff, and it was great, especially at first. There was a novelty factor to Clarke Griffin making calls and asking for money. The donors got a kick out of it." She rolls her eyes at this, as if Clarke Griffin is a separate person, one she doesn't think very highly of. "But the old artistic director had some health problems, and they asked me to step in. It's been interesting."_

__Interesting _can't help coming across as something of an understatement. Griffin's decision to leave Hollywood four years ago, at the height of her fame, was a controversial one, and it sparked a great deal of debate._

_"It's so ridiculous," Griffin says, disdainful. "There is no controversy. There is no other side of this issue! It's my life. I decided I didn't want to be in Hollywood anymore. It's not anyone's business but mine. It's not even Bellamy's. Everyone always wants to make it out like I left my whole life behind for him, and it's either the most romantic or stupidest thing ever. And it's really just that I wasn't happy out there, and I am happy here. It's the simplest thing in the world."_

_When I ask her what made her unhappy, she seems stuck. "It just wasn't a good match for me, I guess. I think you have to love it a lot, to put up with Hollywood. And I like acting fine, but, I don't know." She looks out the window. "I know I had everything anyone could ever want, but that's really only good if it's everything_ I _want too, you know?"_

*

The first reporter is not the right reporter. His name is Finn Collins, and he has that sheen of slick insincerity on him that is everything Clarke does not miss about Hollywood. He's the kind of guy who's so oily paper would turn clear if you rubbed it against him.

Bellamy doesn't like him either, which is a relief, because Bellamy is still kind of weirdly invested in the whole thing. Clarke feels like she's missing something, some vital piece as to _why_ he actually argued for this, and it bugs her, that she can't put her finger on it. 

"Has your brother talked to you about the article?" she asks Octavia. There's an author signing at the bookstore, and Lincoln is helping with tech week for the play at the high school where he teaches, so the two of them are taking the chance to hang out and drink with each other, instead of with their husbands/fiances.

"He told me the reporter your mom sent was a dipshit."

Clarke snorts. "Yeah, he was. I meant more generally."

"Why don't you just ask me what you want to know? Or, better yet, just ask Bell. I'm a sucky middle man."

"It's just kind of weird that he thinks this is a good idea, right? The interview. I don't get why he cares."

Octavia gives her a singularly unimpressed look. No one does unimpressed as well as the Blake siblings; Clarke assumes that's why they've kind of unofficially adopted Lexa. The three of them all looking unimpressed at the same time would probably be fatal. "There's only one reason he would care, Clarke. He thinks it'll make you feel better."

"I'm not even feeling bad," Clarke points out, but she knows Octavia is probably right. Maybe he thinks she needs closure. Maybe he thinks it'll be a good article. "Do you think he cares what people think about him?"

"More things to just ask _him_." But Octavia's thinking about it. "Not much. But they do think some dumb things, right?"

"Yeah," she says. "Occasionally I get genuinely weird conspiracy-theory stuff about how I discovered something I wasn't supposed to know doing that dumb alien blockbuster a few years ago, but it's more a lot of kind of-- _you're going to regret leaving your life behind for him, he's not worth it, is he blackmailing you_ bullshit."

"That sounds more like something people tell you than something people tell him."

"Yeah, but he knows they tell me. And I know he gets it sometimes too, just, like--what did you do to her, monster."

Octavia shrugs. "Like I said, he's probably more worried about you than himself. He knows you love him. But--" She worries her lip. "He might care that other people think you don't."

Clarke had somehow never thought of it like that; she knew that people thought she must have secret reasons for leaving, but she'd never really put it together that they might think her feelings were Bellamy were anything less than genuine. Even with the stupid emails it was just--unthinkable.

"Does it bug you that the media has decided you're a beard?" is what she ends up asking him.

"Is that really what they settled on?" he asks. He's trying to fix their sink, and Clarke is handing him tools. She's pretty sure they're just going to have to call a plumber, but Bellamy is really against calling professionals to do anything he thinks he should be able to do himself. Which is most things. Clarke grew up thinking of home repairs as something other people did for her; Bellamy couldn't ever afford that kind of help.

"Not exactly," she says. "But that you're kind of--I don't know. Collateral damage?"

"Do we have a bigger wrench?"

"How big is the one you have?" He hands it back to her, and she gives him a larger one. "You know Sims die doing this, right?"

"Sims die doing everything." Bellamy's not the type to forget a question, so Clarke doesn't ask again, just waits while he tinkers. "So, there's a smart answer to that and a dumb one." he finally says.

"Okay."

"The smart one is the one I already gave you, all the stuff--I really think there are probably people who genuinely care about your well-being, and Oscars and all that."

"That's not about you."

"Yeah, well. The stuff about me is stupid."

"And?"

He heaves a sigh. "You might not get this. But it's in enough movies it's probably universal."

"You know I have non-movie life experience, right?"

"So you keep telling me. Try the tap again." She turns it on, and he makes a noise when it's still leaking. "Fuck.Turn it off." He tinks for a second, and then says, "Okay, so--I've never been one of those big celebrity people. I thought you were cool, I like, you know. Robert Downey Junior seems badass, Harrison Ford, Jennifer Lawrence. Whatever. I don't pay much attention. But it's still--" He sighs. "You're Clarke, okay? But you're always going to be _Clarke Griffin_ too, and Clarke Griffin is this beautiful, famous actress half the world is in love with. And--she's in love with _me_. It's not cooler than you being in love with me, but it's still pretty cool. I'm never going to get up on the bar at Tondici and yell about it, but I wouldn't mind if I got some credit. It's one of those stupid adolescent fantasies coming true. And it sucks that people look at me like I'm lying about it. Just sometimes."

Clarke has to smile. "I have seen _Notting Hill_. I know this is a fantasy for people."

"I told you you were gonna know about it from movies," he says, but there's a gruffness in his voice that means he's still embarrassed.

"I get it anyway," she says. "I remember when I started going out with Lexa. She could have anyone, and she wanted me." She pauses. "And no one knew about that either, because I wasn't out."

"Congratulations on having a relatable human experience."

"You could die under that sink like a Sim, you know. I could make it look like an accident."

"Too late, I think I'm done. Try the tap again?"

Clarke turns the water back on, and Bellamy slides out from under the sink, brushing himself off. 

"See? Who needs plumbers?"

"We're eventually going to need a plumber. Something worse than a leaky sink will happen."

"That's what the internet is for," he says, using the newly fixed sink to clean himself off. "Are you still not sure about the interview? Because it's seriously not a big deal, the whole--" He rubs his neck. "It barely bothers me. Just sometimes. Not enough it should--"

Clarke leans up and kisses him. "It's not stupid, Bellamy."

He gives her a wry smile. "It's kind of petty, though. My beautiful, amazing, former-movie-star fiancee loves me, and some people think she doesn't. Really sucks to be me."

"Do you remember the kind of shit I was upset about when you met me?"

"You hated your entire life," he points out, all easy amusement. She can see him relaxing, embarrassment abating. "My life is awesome. Yours was just supposed to be."

"Yeah, but I had _so much money_."

He snorts. "You still have so much money. Why do you think I want to marry you?"

*

_It does read like the script to a romantic comedy. The big Hollywood star comes to small town USA and discovers that fame and fortune can't make her happy--she needs the simple life and the love of a good man._

_"If you want to be an asshole about it," Blake says, mild. He's alphabetizing the young adult section, periodically handing me volumes and telling me I should try this one. "Clarke didn't like Hollywood. And it's not like she's unfulfilled here. If she was, we'd move. She likes the theater festival. Monroe [Griffin's former assistant] gave her like fifty possible jobs when she moved because Clarke is incapable of not doing anything. Acting just wasn't the thing that she wanted to be doing anymore."_

_Griffin and Blake met her first night in Arcadia, at the bar where Blake's sister works. Griffin came with the mechanic who was fixing her car, which had broken down twenty minutes from her hotel, and took an instant liking to Blake._

_"She just liked that I was kind of a dick," he says. He seems unable to keep a smile off his face when he talks about Griffin, although it's hard to tell if he's aware of it. "Honestly, I think it was just a relief that we were mostly acting normal. My sister was freaking out a little, but it wasn't that noticeable." He grins. "And then she showed up at the store the next morning and she was so awkward, it was great. She's never that good with new people, not unless she's got a reason to talk to them, and she hadn't had her coffee yet. It was just a total human-interaction failure for her."_

_While rumors of the relationship began almost immediately, it wasn't until Griffin announced she was leaving LA and acting that anyone took it seriously. What had seemed like a summer fling at best was suddenly a whole new life._

_Blake's only comment is, "If she'd wanted to go back to Hollywood and asked me to go with her, I might have. I don't know." He hands me another book. "I'm glad I didn't find out."_

*

The next reporter is a quiet, unassuming woman who introduces herself as Maya Vie. She strikes Clarke as one of those people who's always around at parties, usually with a drink in hand, saying very little, but afterward, she'll be able to recite every conversation that happened. Clarke likes her on instinct, which is her favorite way to like people. She likes when it's easy.

She gives Maya a tour of the theater festival first, not willing to send her over to Bellamy until she's _sure_. Part of it is how much she disliked Collins, and her concern about Bellamy's feelings, which--okay, she's always worried about his feelings, but it's worse now that she knows how much there is to worry about. And there's also the niggling feeling that, honestly, there isn't much of a _story_ here.

That's what really worries her about the entire interview, why she thinks it might not work out how they want it to. Famous actress falls for small-town boy only sounds like a good plot because there's some drama in it, and all the drama Clarke had came long before she met Bellamy. The tell-all interview people want is the one about her parents and the pressures of show business and child celebrity, but no one realizes that's what they want, and if they don't ask, Clarke certainly isn't going to give it to them. She's been talking around those issues for years; she knows all the tricks.

Bellamy is the easy answer, but he's a boring one too. There was no great, dramatic declaration, not even really much indecision. Clarke wanted to stay, and Bellamy wanted to keep her. There were none of the hallmarks of the classic movie romance Clarke's so familiar with from work, no misunderstandings or stubborn refusal to talk about things. She and Bellamy have always understood each other.

"What do you want out of this story?" Clarke asks Maya, once the notepad has gone away. She doesn't really believe she's off the record, but she doesn't think she has to be.

Maya smiles, wry. "The Clarke Griffin interview. Everyone wants the Clarke Griffin interview."

"I cannot have told you anything you want to hear."

There's a pause at that as Maya studies her. "I thought the story would be about your mother, but my editor told me I should go for the love story after your mother just gave me an unhelpful line about how happy she is for you."

Clarke can't help grinning. "Seriously? This was her idea."

"So the two of you do still talk."

"We do better as a long-distance relationship."

"You left right after she got engaged," says Maya, casual.

"I keep saying, I didn't like Hollywood. I've never pretended I was happy there." She worries her lip. "It can be two stories."

"Not according to my editor," says Maya.

"Yeah, probably not. If you want, you know, a blurb on that, I was tired of being in the limelight, I didn't enjoy the Hollywood lifestyle, and I started acting too young to know if that was really what I wanted to do."

"And I assume there were specific events that made you feel this way."

Clarke grins. "Obviously." She considers, wondering if it's worth sharing, but--the thing about her leaving was it wasn't just her father, or her mother, or Wells, or Kane. It was everything about her life, everything about her world.

She wasn't happy, and it's hard to explain something like that. She had all the individual components of a good life, but they didn't work together to make a good life. Not for her.

"You're never going to get a satisfactory explanation for that," she finally tells Maya. "I needed to get out, and it turned out I fit in here pretty well." She shrugs. "None of the reasons I had that I wanted to leave--they're not _why_ I left. Anymore than Bellamy is. He's just--the most obvious thing that changed."

"So, you don't want to confess to any long-time substance abuse problems or daddy issues?" Maya asks, with a small smile.

"Just good, old-fashioned ingratitude," she says. "Go talk to Bellamy."

*

_The reason we care about Griffin again--outside of the die-hard fans who have kept the faith these last few years--is that she made a movie. A good movie, for which she's nominated for an Oscar. First-time director Wells Jaha said he wanted the best cast he could get, and the best cast included his old friend, Clarke Griffin._

_"I hated Hollywood," Griffin tells me, blunt. "Just--I never felt like I made any connections. I had Lexa, but she lives in Paris now, and Wells, and then some acquaintances, and my assistant, but I was paying her. So, yeah. It just isn't my scene. Local theater is cool. I like acting. But I hate doing press, I hated a lot of the parts I was getting, and I was just very, very tired."_

_Apparently four years of rest is enough to get her in one movie._

_"And it was only like three weeks! It was so quick and so great. I wouldn't mind doing more stuff like that. I could be the ninja actress. Sneak in, sneak out, come back to Virginia." Her smile dims. "I'm bringing Bellamy next time, though. He's way better at LA than I am."_

_Given Blake made waves at his first-ever red carpet with a killer tux and matching sparkly handbag, it's hard to argue the point. Every time the pair appear together, they look like they've stepped off a whimsical magazine cover. Griffin gives the credit to Lexa, her single-named supermodel BFF, but Lexa is having none of it._

_"I refuse to be blamed for inflicting Blake on the world," she tells me, during our very short phone interview._

_(Later, Blake shows me a picture of her wearing one of those best-friend heart necklaces most often seen on preteen girls; I assume it says something appropriately sappy, but when he shows me his half, I discover it's_ bitches for life _. Griffin proudly informs me they're very fond of each other.)_

_Griffin's return to film gave rise to a number of rumors of a comeback, and she can't quash them quickly enough._

_"I know doing an interview kind of comes across like maybe I'm planning to do more of this," she says. "But I'm not, I'm really not. I'm so done." She flashes another smile. "It's a nice place to visit, but you couldn't pay me enough to live there."_

*

Clarke calls her mother the next evening. She has no idea what Maya will write, but--she thinks that it can't be that satisfying a narrative, and it confuses her that Abby didn't want to spice it up. It had been her mother's idea; she'd assumed Abby had some kind of--evil scheme is a bit much, but she'd thought there was _something_. Clarke had visions of an article that boiled down to a family feud on paper, and she'd been ready for it.

This was less expected.

"Oh, Clarke," her mother says when she picks up, the same breathless surprise as every time Clarke calls. "Hello!"

"Hey, Mom."

"How's it going? Did the reporter come?"

"Yeah, she was here yesterday. She said you wouldn't talk to her."

"Well, it's not an article about me, it's an article about you. I didn't want to steal focus."

Clarke pauses, and then says, "Why did you tell me to do it,then?"

"Because I thought it would be good for you, obviously. I get what feels like a dozen questions a day about you, and it's better for you if you answer them instead of me."

"Don't you just tell them I'm happy and fulfilled?"

"For some reason, no one believes it's that simple." There's a pause, and then Abby says, "I thought it would be good publicity for you. You and Bellamy can be very charming, when you want to be. People like you, Clarke. I know you don't want to come back," she adds, before Clarke can. "But you might someday, and it would be good to put yourself in the public eye, every now and then. Get people rooting for you."

Clarke closes her eyes. "Bellamy just wanted people to stop thinking he was keeping me in a sex dungeon."

There's a long pause, and then Abby finally says, "I hope he didn't say that in the article."

Bellamy comes back in then, arms full of groceries, hair a mess. He starts to talk, and then just flashes a grin when he sees she's on the phone, roots around in one of his bags and shows her he bought macaroni shaped like dinosaurs.

That should have been the whole article. _Clarke Griffin left Hollywood because no one there bought her dinosaur macaroni._ But Maya already left, and she probably has a minimum word count.

She gives Bellamy a thumbs up and turns her attention back to her mother. "You'll just have to read it and find out."

*

_After Blake's shift ends, he gives me a ride over to Tondici, the bar where his sister works. Like most of the places Griffin spent time in during her first days in Arcadia, the bar enjoyed a spike in popularity because of her fame, but according to Octavia Blake, it's calmed down by now._

_"Everyone knows you can find Clarke here most nights if you want," she says, sliding me a beer. "But, honestly, it's not like it's hard to find Clarke. Her number's listed on the MWTF website."_

_When I ask if a lot of people still come looking for her, the Blake siblings exchange a look._

_"It varies," Bellamy tells me. "The first year or so, when everyone still thought she'd be going back to acting soon, we got a lot of--" He gestures vaguely with his beer bottle. "Paparazzi, weird calls, people trying to get the real story of what she was doing out here. Sometimes I still go to her IMDB page and check out the conspiracy theories in the comments."_

_"Or the Talk tab on her Wikipedia page," his sister adds._

_"Oh yeah, that one's awesome. Every few weeks someone will try to add some weird comment about what she's really doing, and there'll be this long debate thread about whether or not she's involved in FBI work or the Illuminati is controlling her, or I've just got some really great blackmail. It's hilarious."_

_I ask if they've ever contributed, and they exchange another look._

_"No comment," says Octavia, and gives me a free drink._

_Griffin arrives twenty minutes after we do and slumps into the stool next to Bellamy, letting her head drop onto his shoulder._

_"You know there's a reporter here, right?" he asks her._

_"Oh no, do you think she'll figure out we're engaged?"_

_The engagement is recent, or at least recently announced, with no press release or official notice. Griffin quietly updated her Facebook profile status to_ engaged _, and several of her friends commented to ask if Blake was the groom (Blake is not on Facebook). After she confirmed it, the news went viral._

_"There were, what, fifteen articles about how it was a publicity stunt for the new movie?" Griffin asks him._

_"I didn't actually count. But yeah. Publicity stunt, secret pregnancy, blackmail again--"_

_"Blackmail is really popular."_

_"It's probably because I'm blackmailing you," he says, stealing her cider and taking a drink._

_"That's totally going to be in print now. You're on the record saying you're blackmailing me."_

_"No take-backs."_

_"No take-backs," she agrees. "Anyway, yeah. He did propose to me right before the premiere, so it was definitely a carefully planned publicity stunt."_

_"So carefully planned I didn't even bring the ring."_

_"He's a criminal mastermind," says Griffin, patting him on the shoulder. "This article was his idea too. He's got an evil plan to use me for fame and fortune."_

_"For sure. Step one, seduce the rich, famous movie star. Step two, convince her to leave that life behind, meaning she makes way less money and you can't use her for her connections. Step three, stage a comeback, because--did I have a plan for that?"_

_"I assume it's related to the blackmail."_

_"That must be it." He flashes me a wry smile. "Are we giving you anything you can use at all?"_

_I've been asking myself the same question all day. An interview with Clarke Griffin is the holy grail; she hasn't spoken to anyone personally since she gave up acting with a curt press release, issued by her assistant, and did as few interviews as possible even before that. Demand was highest right after she quit, of course, and whenever Griffin turned down a major role and the accompanying bags of money with dollar signs on them she was offered if she'd just come back, public interest in her story would reignite._

_(Her salary for Jaha's project was the lowest she's ever received; when I ask her about it, she says she was rusty, so she probably didn't deserve the usual compensation. And then she changes the subject with very little grace.)_

_Of course, the new film prompted new rumors about both Griffin's departure from acting and the possibility of her return, chief among them--according to Griffin's IMDB page--that she had and raised a secret child, went into rehab, and/or, of course, blackmail. To most of us, it's incomprehensible. Clarke Griffin had it all, and it's unsatisfying to think she gave it up for a boy, like the heroine of a romantic comedy or Lifetime movie. The tagline would be "She had everything she could ever want--except love," and the poster would feature her and Blake propped against each other, smirking._

_It's very close to what they've given me, and I'm despairing of what my editor is going to say when Griffin, on her fourth cider, leans across the bar and tells me, "It's the grammar," like she's sharing her biggest secret._

_"No one but you knows what you're talking about," Blake tells her._

_"Everyone in the world, starting with Monroe four years ago and not including Bellamy," she says, jerking her head toward Blake, "wants to make this into a sentence. Clarke Griffin quit acting because she fell for this random dude."_

_"Thanks, babe."_

_"But it's two sentences. Clarke Griffin quit acting. Clarke Griffin fell for Bellamy Blake. They happened at the same time, but it's not, like. A causal relationship. Causal, right?" she asks Blake._

_"Right," he agrees, and tells his sister Griffin is cut off. Octavia gives him a perfect little-sister eye roll; clearly, she's ahead of him on that one._

_"If anything," Griffin says, paying them no mind, "it was more like I fell for him because I quit acting. I came out here because I was done with Hollywood and needed a break, and--I didn't_ know _I never wanted to go back, but I didn't. And then Bellamy started blackmailing me, so--"_

_Blake rolls his eyes and slings his arm around her, making her laugh. They seem like any other couple, one you'd meet at a friend's party and add on Facebook after because they seemed cool. Except she happens to look a lot like someone who used to be an actress._

_"I'd better take her home," says Blake, getting his shoulder under Griffin for support she doesn't really seem to need. "You get everything you needed?"_

_My editor is going to murder me. But I tell him I did, because, really, what else is there?_

**Author's Note:**

> I am aware Maya's article is not a very thrilling article, but I assume she just doesn't work for a great publication, so it's okay.


End file.
